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Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 Is the iPad Air's Nemesis

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Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9-Inch Review

The Other Tablet You Should Consider Buying

Amazon's Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 is a great-performing tablet. Although its app catalog isn't as deep as iOS or Android, it packs excellent hardware into a good-looking package, and all your Amazon books, music and video are just a tap away. It starts at $379.

Apps Grid

Showing off it's new grid view.

Box

The minimalist Kindle Fire box has gotten quite sleek.

Origami Case

This foldable case is pretty cool, though a bit heavy for my tastes.

Origami Instruction

It takes just a moment to learn how to fold the Origami case.

Unboxed

Unboxed and turned on.

HDX 8.9 Under HDX 7

We stacked the HDX 7 on top of the HDX 8.9 to give you an idea of the size difference.

HDX 8.9 and HDX 7

The smaller HDX 7 is on the left.

Battery Life

Battery life was as good as advertised, but after a full-day of use, the Kindle did request some juice.

Cloud Storage and Sync

The Kindle comes with 5GB of free cloud storage space. You can put files up their and sync them across devices. Also, the Kindle Fire can now print wirelessly -- with the right software.

Facebook App Design

The Facebook App sign-in looks a bit odd in landscape mode.

FreeTime

Amazon's FreeTime app is a great way to manage your children's time on the tablet.

Magazine

Magazines, especially those with great photography, look amazing on the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9.

Page Turn

Look at the pretty page turn. It's like the real thing.

Music Local or in Cloud

You can choose to store your purchased music locally for offline access or in the cloud.

NBA2K14

Console-level games like this look amazing on the Kindle Fire HDX.

Silk Browser

The Silk browser, which pulls cached content from Amazon's servers is a very good mobile browser.

Skype

The device's front-facing camera is good for video conferencing.

Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 X-Ray IMDB

Like to know who that guy is in the movie you're watching? Amazon's X-Ray has you covered.

X-Ray Music

Never get the words wrong again.

Presentations

The pickings for quality presentation software are a bit slim.

As we slide anxiously into the holiday buying season, it may be smart to start narrowing your gift-buying options. It’s true, there are many choices across of wide spectrum of gadgets. Even as you try to zero in on one category — say, tablets — the options can appear overwhelming.

However, I’ll tell you a little secret. For full-sized consumer tablets you’re really going to be choosing between two models (three if you feel adventuresome): the Apple iPad Air and the fully redesigned and quite exquisite Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9.

For its Kindle Fire tablet line, Amazon more or less went back to the drawing board this year, introducing two devices with race-car edges and a pleasing balance between soft-touch rubber and a glistening black finish. It changed up the insides too, adding new, more powerful components and a screen resolution that, at least on the largest Fire, is virtually unmatched in its category.

When Amazon handed me the Kindle Fire HDX 7-inch model a few weeks ago, I was not disappointed. It made good use of its 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor and, 323 ppi (pixels per inch) resolution screen. Fire OS 3.0 is now a mature mobile OS that continues to do a better and better job of hiding Android’s remaining complexities.

The Kindle Fire HDX 8.9, which I review here, carries forward pretty much all that I liked about the smaller tablet, while adding a few new features of its own.

A Familiar Design

From a distance, it’s hard to tell the HDX 7 and HDX 8.9 apart. Both products feature 16:9 glass screen with an all-black bezel, and a small HD video conferencing camera on the front. The backs offer a mix of shiny plastic and a soft-touch rubber-covered frame, but the HDX 8.9 adds an 8MP rear HD camera. More on that latter.

It's a beautiful and somewhat futuristic look that’s only enhanced when you hold up the Kindle Fire HD 8.9. At 13.2 ounces, the new Kindle Fire is actually lighter than the iPad Air. On the other hand, the 9.7-inch iPad is noticeably larger. The 0.29-inch-thick Air is almost imperceptibly thinner than the 0.31-inch Fire HDX 8.9. Hold either one of these tablets for any length of time and you’ll be hard-pressed to return to you so-called ultra-light laptop.

Amazon warned me that I was testing a non-final piece of hardware, and there was some evidence of this: a couple of edges that were not quite flush. I’d catch my fingers on them when I held the Fire HDX in two hands. A minor point, but I expect Amazon to deliver perfect fit and finish if it wants to compete with the iPad Air’s svelte unibody design.

All the Power You Need

Both Amazon Kindle Fire HDX tablets feature Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 mobile CPUs. As a result, the Fire HDX 8.9 never struggled, stuttered or slowed down. I played the console-level game Asphalt 8, watched HD moves and more with nary a hiccup. On the other hand, the same could be said of the A7-running iPad Air. The point is, whichever tablet you choose, you will not disappointed by performance.

Interface

The Kindle Fire Interface should, by now, be familiar to millions of Fire owners. With its oversized icons, the carousel, which represents recently used apps and content and sits below the menu bar (Shop, Games, Apps, Books, Music, Videos, Newsstand, Audiobooks, Web, Photos and Docs), has never been my favorite. However, thanks to the near-perfect and smooth performance, it’s growing on me. Also, with Fire OS 3.0, I now have the option of a (perhaps more familiar) grid view. It sits just below the carousel. If you want, that can be your default view.

When you’re in an app, you can get back to the home screen by sweeping in from the right edge of the screen to get contextual navigation, search and a home button. If you hold the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 in landscape mode, this bar appears on the right. If you hold it in portrait mode, the bar may appear on the bottom. I really don’t like this inconsistency and much prefer Apple’s physical home button.

A sweep from the top edge of the screen reveals a control panel with access to Auto Rotate Lock, Brightness, Wi-Fi control, a Quiet Time button to turn off notifications, access to Settings and Mayday. If any of this sounds familiar it’s because it’s quite similar to Apple’s new iOS 7 Control Center. It’s a great idea on either tablet.

Below the Control Panel are notifications, which include email, social notifications and calendar events.

The big innovation here is Mayday. I actually started test driving this 24/7 365-day-a-year video tech support on the Kindle Fire HDX7. In both tablets, it worked just as advertised. I selected Mayday on the HDX 8.9 screen and within moments was looking at and speaking to “Nathan,” a very friendly Amazon tech support rep. He could hear me, but, by design, could not see me.

I asked him about an issue with the time-stamps on my photos (it was off by many hours) and, with my permission, he took over the Kindle Fire screen to dig around and find out what was wrong. We eventually decided to do a hard reboot. Tablets are, by their nature, highly intuitive devices, but if you gift this device to your Luddite Uncle and late-to-tech grandmother, they may appreciate the helping hand.

Apps and Content

Amazon’s curated app store is full of most of the apps you’ll want or need. There are games like Temple Run (1 and 2), the aforementioned Asphalt, Iron Man, productivity apps like Mobisuite Office Suite Pro 7, Skype for video conferencing, IMDb, Sketchbook Mobile for Drawing and a lot more. Ultimately, though, I think the Kindle Fire HDX shines best as a content-consumption device. It's simply a pleasure to read books, magazines, and comic books, watch movies and listen to music on the tablet.

It also makes it incredibly easy to buy content. In fact, it’s easier on the Kindle Fire HDX than on the iPad Air, which is always asking me to sign in. On the other hand, that ease could give some people pause. Don’t worry, though — there’s the included parental control FreeTime apps, which essentially can lock down much of the tablet’s content and features for as many children as you have and even offers granular controls such as per-user daily time limits for reading, watching videos and using apps. Apple’s Restrictions settings in iOS 7 really don’t compare.

I also find consuming content equally enjoyable on the iPad Air. The Kindle Fire HDX does, though, add something special to the mix: X-Ray. In movies, this IMDb-powered feature provides in-sync actor and trivia info while you’re watching a movie. The info appears as overlays that you can dismiss or dive into (the movie pauses in the background).

The Amazon Prime movie library (part of a $75-a-year Prime membership that includes free 2-day shipping), has a selection comparable to what you’ll find on Netflix on the iPad Air. And just like Apple’s iTunes, Amazon lets your rent and buy HD movies, which look amazing on the HDX 8.9’s 2,560 x 1,600 display.

In music, X-Ray provides synced lyrics for hundreds of popular songs. You may discover that you really don’t know the words to your favorite songs.

Amazon’s Kindle reading roots shine through in the HDX 8.9. Magazines look great and, unlike in the iPad Air, get that nifty animated page turn. The 8.9-inch screen is a decent size for reading. I read DC Comics Earth One Part 1 on the iPad Air and Part 2 on the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9. The graphic novels looked good on both, but the larger screen on the iPad Air meant I switched between portrait and landscape to see larger panels a little less often.

Silk remains Amazon’s default web browser for the Kindle Fire line of tablets. It’s gotten faster, but still tops out at 10 open tabs. I can open up to 15 on the iPad Air (okay, that’s not that big of a difference). Also, the browser is where one of the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9’s benefits turns into a bit of a deficit. The screen resolution is so high that some of the fonts on the names of open tabs and in the descriptions of Most Visited sites are too tiny and almost unreadable. This is also because the Kindle Fire’s background color of choice is black. White on black text is simply harder to read.

You would think that the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9’s higher resolution screen would provide a lot more web information per page than the iPad Air, but that’s not really the case. The iPad Air’s screen is at least an inch deeper, so I actually saw more of, for example, Mashable’s homepage on the Air than on the HDX. Silk provides consistent page navigation on the right side of the screen, but Safari adds gestures: a sweep from the left side of the screen returns you to the previous page. Both browsers are good, but overall, I think Safari has the edge here.

Camera

I’m still stunned that people hold up full-sized iPads to take photos and videos, but they do and in surprisingly large numbers. As a result, camera quality matters on these larger tablets. As I mentioned in my iPad Air review, Apple didn’t do much to improve the iSight camera over the fourth-generation iPad. Even so, the 5MP camera takes decent photos.

Amazon’s included an 8MP, 1080p-capable camera on the HDX 8.9 (there’s a lower resolution, HD-video-capable camera on the front for video conferencing). It takes good pictures, and in side-by-side comparisons with photos from the iPad Air, the increased resolution is apparent. The Kindle Fire HDX 8.9’s camera is also capable of panoramic shots. They looked decent, but not great, which, considering the resolution, kind of surprised me.

To further analyze the picture quality, I decided to compare an iPhone 5S' 8MP panorama mode to the Kindle Fire’s (the iPad Air cannot take panoramic photos). The results surprised me. From what I can tell, the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 does not take full-resolution shots in panoramic mode. As you can see from the photo, the image quality on the 5S is simply better.

No matter what kind of photos you start with, the Kindle Fire offers a boatload of built-in photo-editing features, including filters, redeye correction, brightness and contrast, focus, auto-enhance and more.

Battery Life

I got pretty much the advertised battery life on the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9, though I did notice that a full day of activity really ran the battery down. I did just as much with the iPad Air and found its battery ready for, possibly, another half day of activity.

Origami

For an additional $69 you can buy the unusual Origami case and cover. This foldable cover and stand is pretty much the same as what we tried with the HDX 7. It uses magnets to hold onto the tablet (the iPad Air’s much lighter Smart Case fits snugly on the tablet). The cover folds into a stand that can be used in portrait or landscape mode. It also has one other unusual feature.

If you hold onto both the case and tablet and then use your fingers to slide the tablet up a half inch within the case — just enough to expose the rear camera — the camera app automatically launches and you can take a photo. This sounds like a neat idea, but I found it awkward and clumsy to use, a gimmick that Amazon should do away with as soon as possible.

Connectivity

Amazon did not send me the LTE version of the HDX 8.9, so I don't know how it’ll perform in situations where Wi-Fi isn’t available. Fortunately, Wi-Fi is pretty much ubiquitous, so I was able to test in a variety of situations.

A lot has been made of Apple’s decision to use MIMO (multiple in/multiple out) Wi-Fi technology. It turns out that Amazon is using the same technology and the results are the same. Downloads are faster and HD content starts streaming almost instantly.

At 6.2 inches wide, the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 is slightly easier to hold in one hand, though nowhere near as comfortable as the 5.3-inch-wide iPad Mini. With the iPad Air, you get a much larger screen for your trouble. The HDX 8.9’s screen is actually narrower than that of the iPad Mini, though it’s almost a full-inch taller.

I will always prefer a larger screen, and expect it when I buy a larger device. That said, the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 offers more pixels per inch than either the Air or Mini, which means, in some situations, you can fit more stuff on the screen and some of what you see will look much sharper on the Amazon device.

Value

Amazon sent me the $394 16GB Wi-Fi-only model (a high-end 64 GB Wi-Fi/LTE model will run you $594). It’s roughly $100 cheaper than a comparable iPad Air. Normally I would say Amazon offers the better value. However, now that Apple is throwing in two suites of powerful and fun software: iLife and iWork, I think the playing field has somewhat leveled out.

In fact, when you consider the collection of Apps you get for free with the iPad Air (you do have to download them), you realize it isn’t always easy to find comparable options on the Kindle Fire HDX. A good example is Apple's powerful Garage Band music composition software. Even in productivity, OfficeSuite Professional’s presentation app is no match for Apple Keynote.

Overall, I like the Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 and can heartily recommend it. If I had to choose, though, I would still go with the iPad Air. First of all, the Air has a better, cleaner design. Second, the iOS ecosystem and associated apps are still better. A good example is Twitter for the Kindle Fire. It looks like they took mobile phone software design and simply stretched it. I see this far too often on Android tablets, even extremely well-thought-out ones like the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9. This is something I have never seen on an iPad. Every piece of software looks like it was custom designed for Apple’s platform, probably because it has been.

If minor nits like that do not bother you, then, by all means, get an Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9. It’s good-looking, light, fast, endlessly entertaining and a very, very good value.

The Lowdown:

What’s Good:

Quality design

Lightweight

Smart, effective interface

What’s Bad:

Silly Origami camera mode

Smaller screen than you might like

Bottom Line:In the race for consumer tablet dominance, the Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 is in near lock-step with the stellar iPad Air. Your choice may come down to ecosystem preference.

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